


Ouroboros

by Laurie



Category: Tenet (2020)
Genre: Chris Nolan what have you done to me, I can't stop writing Tenet stories, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-10
Updated: 2020-10-11
Packaged: 2021-03-08 04:14:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26939461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Laurie/pseuds/Laurie
Summary: “Ah, Mister… Spencer, right, do come in,” the man says with a barely visible smirk. “For someone as set on getting rejected for every job opportunity as yourself, you sure could have made an effort to get here on time, Mr Spencer.”Immediately, Neil dislikes him.“Doctor,” he grits out, feeling his face flushing. “It’sDoctorSpencer.”
Relationships: Neil/The Protagonist (Tenet)
Comments: 15
Kudos: 96





	Ouroboros

**Author's Note:**

> Jesus, another Tenet fanfic no one asked for. Meanwhile there's a ton a actual work waiting for to finish writing smut and get a grip of myself. God help me.

“I’m sorry,” the HR woman says over the phone, not sounding sorry in the slightest, and Neil’s stomach turns and twists, disappointment spreading heavy in his chest. “But the position has been filled.”

Neil shuts his eyes, lets out a slow long breath. Someone bumps into his shoulder, and he realizes he’s stopped dead in the middle of a busy street, causing everyone to sidestep him. He starts walking slowly, rejection and disappointment filling him with every move.

“Could you at least give me some feedback?” Neil says, trying to sound a lot less distressed than he actually feels. “Please?”

But the line has already gone dead. Neil stares at his phone in utter disbelief at the woman’s lack of tact and respect, until another person crushes into him, snarls ‘watch where you’re going, asshole!’, and Neil has to put the phone away and walk ahead in complete bewilderment.

This hasn’t been the first time he’s been turned down for a job. The particularly disheartening detail is – this has not been first time _since this morning._ Neil’s been getting rejections for weeks and weeks now, and no matter how much his friends and his girlfriend are trying to cheer him up, no matter how they try to blame anything from circumstance to the economic crisis to even the capitalism itself – it’s doing nothing for Neil’s self-esteem.

His dissertation was widely considered to be a masterpiece among both his peers and his academic advisors, earned him a prestige status of _a prodigy_ , and generally made everybody sure of Neil’s exciting and brilliant future career in applied physics as soon as he dips his toe into the real world that surrounded Oxford. Nora went as far as to convince him employers would be queuing up, trying to get themselves a piece of Neil’s brilliance and genius. Naturally – high on finally acquiring those elite _P-H-D_ letters next to his name, getting the beautiful Nora he’s crushed on for months to start a relationship with him, and his life generally having not sucked for the last year – Neil’s let it go to his head.

Now, suddenly finding himself unneeded and rejected again and again, still pathetically unemployed after months of exhausting dragged-out interviews, he feels himself painfully crushing back to the familiar old ground, wings scorched by the sun too close.

It’s not like he’s getting rejected straightaway, at the stage of sending out his CV. It’s actually _after_ people get to meet him and get to know him a bit. And isn’t that just infinitely worse that his actual personality must be the off-putting factor that no one can apparently look beyond, enough to want to offer him a job he’s obviously qualified to do? How is he supposed to fix it if it’s his actual _character_ that is a no-go disadvantage, preventing anyone from wanting to hire him?

His phone vibrates, and Neil is eager to see if it’s another notification for a reply from a potential employer.

It is and it isn’t.

He’s got an email from a recruiting agency he doesn’t remember registering for advertising a job for a company he’s never heard of, and the letter is generic and copied the same to all the numerous recipients. It’s obviously meant to attract whomever reads it and is desperate enough for a job – any job with minimum requirements and qualifications, and Neil’s first impulse is to send it straight to the spam folder.

However, his finger halts right above the button, and he hesitates for a moment. Isn’t he just desperate enough? Hasn’t it been months of excruciating and pointless searching that never led anywhere? Is this what he’s been reduced to – answering every generic shit job for the sake of having a chance to respond to anything at all?

In the end he doesn’t delete the letter.

In the evening, when he’s having a pint with Nora he tells her about the rejection he’s got from Aperture Science, and it might be a trick of the light – or Neil might be simply getting paranoid – but Nora’s face betrays the expression of disappointment and disapproval, like Neil has let her down by not turning out to be the successful extraordinary physicist she’s expected him to be. She doesn’t say anything, but Neil thinks he can read her well enough to see it anyway: the slight tension of her shoulders, the downwards turn of her lips, the barely noticeable crease between her eyebrows.

So that is why he ends up telling her about the recruitment agency email he’s got, some deep, shameful part of him doing its best to make it sound like a real legit job offer instead of a paid advertisement it actually was. But Nora is smiling much warmer at him now, all straight white teeth and dimples, so Neil stuffs his shame into the further corner of his mind and forgets all about it, glad and relieved to see her proud of him again.

And that’s how he ends up getting an interview at Tenet, Inc.

***

The address Neil was given turns out to be a basement shithole on the last intersection on the way leaving town to a middle of nowhere, which adds to Neil’s shame and desperation some. He’s spent hours getting here, and he guesses this interview will be about as fun as a trip to a urologist.

But then, Neil has to remind himself, - the time for _fun_ interviews where he’d be offered overpriced coffee and biscuits is long gone. This trip is more along the line of desperation and begging, so Neil should really get into the appropriate headset.

He has to wait for a clear _come in_ after he knocks on the coarse flimsy door downstairs, and the small office inside looks just like an AA meeting space safe for the chairs set up in a circle. Neil looks around for a moment, really taking it all in, allowing himself a moment of pure panic at the painful realization that _this_ is what he’s been reduced to, before his eyes finally set on the man in the centre of the room.

“Ah, Mister… Spencer, right, do come in,” the man says, sounding unsure about Neil’s last name as if there’d been a dozen other candidates in this shithole before Neil, and he has trouble remembering everyone interested. He looks Neil up and down with a myriad emotion flickering over his face too fast for Neil to decipher any, before his face straightens into an impassive expression. Then his lips turn a fraction upwards – a barely visible smirk. “For someone as set on getting rejected for every job opportunity as yourself, you sure could have made an effort to get here on time, Mr Spencer.”

Immediately, Neil dislikes him.

“Doctor,” he grits out, feeling his face flushing. He’s only late for two fucking minutes, and it’s not like he could have just walked here or taken a bus to this godforsaken stack of half-ruined buildings in the middle of nowhere. “It’s _Doctor_ Spencer.”

The asshole tilts his head, smiling thinly, but doesn’t actually correct himself.

“I’m sorry, but I’m only a couple minutes late, and it actually took me two and half hours to get here,” Neil mumbles, already halfway into his grave, as far as interviews go.

“Time management is _essential,_ ” the man says with a great emphasis on the last word. “You will need to improve, if you want to work here, Neil.”

He almost goes to correct _it’s Doctor Spencer_ , but stops himself in time. As much as this man is making his teeth ache, maybe the first-name basis is actually good sign of Neil not having majorly fucked up this interview yet. He sighs, grabs a filthy old chair and sits down in front of the guy.

“Here as in – actually, _geographically_ here?” Neil asks, terrified and not even caring if it comes out too rude and disrespectful. As far as small start-ups go, Neil can let many things go – he’s an adjustable bloke, after all, - but working in this damp little basement is a no-go even for him.

The git laughs – a tad condescendingly, if Neil could be a judge of that. “No. We have offices in various areas across the country, and this is not one of them.”

“Then why did you want me to come here?” Neil inquires, angry and more than a little confused. He’s not enjoying the feeling of having to constantly keeping up with the man not even two minutes into the conversation. He’s not good at being clueless, and the discomfort and general uneasiness around the man is getting under his skin.

The man’s lips pull into a lopsided smile. “To see if you’d actually show up.”

In his righteous anger, Neil almost jumps out to walk out right there and then. He stays, though, barely containing himself from telling this asshole to fuck off and let Neil die of embarrassment in peace.

“So Neil,” the man says with raised eyebrows as he sits comfortably in his chair and crosses hi legs. He looks extremely out of place here, in the shabby half-lit room with cheap plastic folding chairs in his expensive tailored suit and shiny black shoes that probably cost more than Neil’s car. Neil almost feels naked in his oversized dress shirt and second-hand suit pants next to him. “Why _did_ you show up?”

He sounds interested, but not at all surprised, as if Neil coming all the way here for some third-tier job was a given. But it’s not like Neil can pretend otherwise, so he gives up trying. “Well, you said it yourself, I’ve been rejected everywhere else,” he admits with a shrug, trying to sound casual about it, trying to seem unbothered. “How do you know that, anyway?”

“I’ve been in touch with some of the other employers,” the man says vaguely. Neil almost asks _why didn’t they want me, did they tell you?_ But that would be too sad and pathetic, so he keeps his mouth shut. “But that doesn’t answer my question. You could have stayed in academia, you’ve got a PhD, after all. Why push it for a non-academic job, where you are obviously unwanted?”

And, okay, _wow_ , way to go to make Neil want the ground to open up and swallow him. He feels his face burning, probably reddening all the way up to his hair.

“Are you this pleasant to everyone you interview?” he asks incredulously, meeting the man’s eyes, “or have I done something to deserve special treatment?”

The guy gives him a small smile. “It’s what you might do in the future, I’m interested in – with persistence like this.”

Neil doesn’t like this guy, despises him more one condescending syllable at a time. Briefly, he wonders if it’s some sort of hiring strategy – to make the interviewee feel as helpless and pathetic as physically possible. But then he thinks he’s helpless and pathetic enough on his own, so maybe he’s getting the exact treatment he deserves.

“So, I repeat myself: why didn’t you stay in academia? Why get the PhD in the first place, if you were never going to?”

“I don’t know!” Neil snaps, all pretense and manners flying out the tiny filthy window. “I didn’t know what I was supposed to do, so I went on to do the doctoral, and it was fine for a while. But then I…” he trails off, realizing how it would sound – what he was about to say.

The man seems to hear him just fine, anyway. “You got bored,” he finishes Neil’s sentence calmly. Neil feels his hands spasm a bit, anxiety surging up in him like a spirit possessing his body.

“I just – it’s interesting and challenging enough, but I wanted something else,” he is rambling, and he doesn’t even care anymore. “I wanted… more.”

“ _More_ ,” the man repeats slowly. “Like what?”

“I don’t know!” Neil almost yells, his heart thumping in his ears, and he jumps to his feet. “Listen, I don’t know what you’re trying to achieve here, and I’m not sure I even want to!” He points an accusing finger at the man’s face. “Why the hell did I even come here – for you to have a bloody laugh at my expense? You haven’t even introduced yourself, what kind of a job interview is this, anyway? Is the job even real? Or do you just summon random people and make them feel like shit for laughs and giggles?”

The man’s initial surprise smoothes out into patience, like Neil is some bloody child he has to humour.

“Please, sit down,” he gestures at the chair Neil’s knocked over in his moment of hysterics. He stands unsure for a moment, before scooping the plastic chair back up, and dropping on it like a sack of potatoes, breathing heavily. The shame and humiliation are almost too much, and he can’t even remember the last time he’s felt so out of his element. “I didn’t expect you to be so dramatic.”

But all fight has gone out of Neil, and it’s like he’s been restored to the default setting – all the stuff he thought he was done with comes back crushing him like a hand of god: the anxiety, the shame, the crippling insecurity. He’s almost forgotten about those in the last year, safe and comfortable in his bubble of delusions he’s built around himself; almost convinced himself he wasn’t that person anymore. Now, his bubble sufficiently popped with a few careless words, Neil’s right back to where he started.

“But you didn’t join the military when you were offered,” the man continues on, as though Neil’s embarrassing outburst never happened. He looks back at the guy, shocked and maybe a little scared now at the uncanny awareness of Neil’s history he seems to have. Who the fuck is this man? “Why?”

Neil stares. “Military? _Me?_ ” he huffs out, and he would laugh if he didn’t want to cry so much. “I never believed for a second there was an actual offer on the table, they must have just confused me with someone else. And I’m not too good at following orders, anyway, I don’t believe I’d make a good soldier.”

“You wouldn’t,” the man says thoughtfully, but there’s a touch of something sorrowful behind his words. Neil looks away, stares at his own shaky hands, sits on them so they wouldn’t tremble.

The man’s phone chimes, breaking the tight woolen silence, and the man reads the message that’s come up on the screen, before sighing and putting the phone away.

“I’ll have to cut this short, I’m afraid,” he says, actually sounding sorry, the condescending twat. “But let me sum it up: you run away from what you want, you have no clue what you need, what you’ve accomplished is just never enough. And you’re miserable,” he pierces Neil with a look too personal, too perceptive. “Does this sound about right?”

There seems to a be a sudden lack of oxygen in the room, and Neil gasps and works his mouth open, nothing coming out, nothing coming in. And Neil thought he could prize himself on his smoothness of mind in stressful situations, but this is so unsettling that he merely stares, his breath caught up tangled and sharp. The asshole gives him a pitiful look that Neil just _hates._

“It’s alright,” he says in a tone one would use to calm down a frightened cornered animal. “I’m going to offer you this job, Neil.”

And what the hell is wrong with this asshole, and why is Neil’s eyes suddenly prickling like he actually _is_ about to cry? What even is this job that hasn’t been mentioned once yet?

“I don’t want it,” Neil croaks, voice wavering and low, and he hates himself. He’s not going to play this asshole’s games, not going to dance to his tune for his petty amusement.

“You don’t even know what it is,” the man smiles, eyes warm and hand gentle when it lays on Neil’s shoulder. “When you do want to know, I’ll be there to tell you all about it.”

“I don’t even have your name or your number,” Neil almost whispers because he doesn’t trust his voice enough. The email confirming this meeting was automatically generated, no names or contacts attached. “How am I supposed to reach you?”

“I will contact you,” the smug bastard says, already on his way to the door. He turns to Neil one more time with his hand on the door handle: “You’ll see me again very soon.”

There’s no _maybe_ or _hopefully_ at the end of that sentence. It’s a mere statement of fact, and Neil is left wondering what the bloody hell was this meeting, even. But when he’s got a grip of himself – the man is already gone.

Neil takes a deep breath and whooshes it out. He takes a moment to cool down and then walks back upstairs and into the cool air outside. His piece of trash car is still there on the empty parking lot. The man is nowhere to be seen, even though he only left a minute ago, and there’s nothing but a highway and empty intersection for miles around.

Neil gets into his car and drives home.

***

He doesn’t tell Nora anything about the meeting, even though she keeps asking him how it went. He settles on vague hums and non-answers, mainly because he doesn’t wish to go through his painful humiliation again for her sake, but also because there’s something else – almost like guilty excitement when he thinks about that asshole in the basement office – something he’s sure he’s not supposed to be feeling.

He spends a week replaying the conversation in his head over and over again, up to the point where he’s memorized every line that was said and every facial expression the man had – which, mind him, wasn’t a lot. He obsesses with every word the man had said, wonders how on earth he could have known about the military when Neil’s made sure to tell no one, wonders why he thought Neil was worth this much research in the first place.

He spends every available second trying to gather info on this Tenet company and comes up short. He tries searching for it this way and that, enters the email address he got an invitation from into the search bar, but as far as any search engine is concerned ‘Tenet, Inc’ doesn’t exist, and Neil has nothing else to go by, really. Nora sends him strange looks every time she notices him refreshing his email account in search for a reply, a message – anything, but doesn’t mention it out loud.

Neil realizes he’s been. Rather distant and secretive with her, and he entertained the thought of telling her about the weirdest meeting of his life, at first, but then he knows how she’d react. He knows she would tell him she’d be creeped out and disappointed at having wasted her time on such an obviously pointless meeting, she’d tell him to drop it and forget about it and then would nag him about why he wouldn’t. And Neil doesn’t have an answer to that one.

He doesn’t know what he feels, and each time there’s nothing new on his email account he’s not sure if he’s relieved or disappointed. He’s not sure if he wants that asshole to contact him or never hear from him again, and he’s not sure why he’s even still thinking about this at all. There were no details given in terms of the actual job Neil was supposed to be interviewed for, and there was no way in hell the man actually thought Neil would be a good fit for… anything, really. Especially considering the mess he made of himself during their conversation.

But that man – despite how much of a bastard he was – saw him. He _saw_ Neil. Saw right through his pretences and his walls and his bullshit straight into the insecure-anxious-pathetic-scared core of him, and still wanted to see Neil anyway.

And how is he supposed to explain any of this to Nora? Beautiful, confident, brilliant Nora, who could be with anyone she wanted but chose Neil for some ungodly reason, instead.

By the end of the week Neil convinces himself the whole thing was some kind of elaborate joke he became the butt of. Someone must have wanted to fuck with him, push him to see how far he’d go before he breaks down and makes a scene, and Neil didn’t really disappoint.

He thinks about it as he orders himself tea in a little coffee shop not far from his flat, and when he turns to walk out, the coffee almost slips out of his hand at the sight in front of him. The man – the smug bloody bastard – is there in the coffee shop, sitting by the window, sipping his drink – all rough handsomeness and effortless style.

Before Neil even registers it, his legs are already moving to confront the man.

“You—” he starts to say, just as the man lifts his eyes at him, and Neil promptly stops.

Because this is not the same man, even though it obviously is. The paradox immediately makes his head hurt, as Neil’s eyes glaze over the man who looks exactly like that employer but is also years younger – no stray grey hairs on his head or in his neat black beard, no wrinkles around his eyes. The haircut is all wrong, the suit seems cheaper and simpler. He looks somehow smaller and less menacing, too, or maybe that’s Neil’s imagination playing tricks on him.

“Can I help you?” the man says, looking up at him with alarm and suspicion, and even his voice is different, too – higher and smoother.

Neil is so on edge he can feel the tension in his _teeth_. This man – this poorly made replica of that asshole obviously has no idea who he is. “Um, no, sorry, I—I thought you were, um, someone else.”

Before the man in front of him can ask Neil if he’s mad or worse – if he needs some change, Neil storms out of the shop on unsteady legs. As he scrolls the email app on his phone and doesn’t see a new letter, he knows with undisputable certainty what the feeling is – disappointment.

***

Neil doesn’t believe in God. Of course, he doesn’t – he’s a physicist, a proper scientist in every sense of the word. Many people in the field often say how it’s the same thing – believing in something that cannot be proven, and isn’t physics really about that most of the time? There are theories and hypotheses and presumptions, and most of those will never be proven, will never have any kind of actual physical evidence behind them, at least not in Neil’s lifetime, but people still believe – they still have _faith_. Believing in God comes with expecting some kind of order in the Universe, some kind of cosmic justice. But hiding in his closet from his drunk mother, frightened of another one of her violent fits, Neil learnt at the very young age that the Universe is unjust and chaotic and indifferent. Accepting those cruel truths so early in life, physics started to make much more sense to him than a single all-powerful deity ever did.

That’s why Neil believes in coincidence, never tried to ascribe special fateful meaning to truly meaningless things that just tend to happen. On a purely mathematical level coincidences happen to people with explicable and precise frequency, unlike what someone would call an ‘act of God.’

He knows that with unwavering certainty, has lived by it his entire life, and yet.

And yet, he gets the call – _blocked number_ – before he even manages to get back home from the coffee shop. And coincidences only go so far.

“How are you doing, Neil?” says the low warm voice out of the speaker – so casually, you’d think he was calling to ask a mate out for a pint.

“I’ve just seen –” but he trails off, not wishing to sound mad within the first ten seconds of this phone call.

“Yes?” and he can _hear_ the bastard smirking.

“I thought I saw you today, but you looked—” _younger, off, wrong_ “ – different.”

“The first time I met you,” the man is saying in a low tone, as if he’s confiding something secret in Neil, “I thought, I’d seen you somewhere before. Only much later did I realize exactly when and where.”

This doesn’t make any sense, and Neil’s heart is beating twice as fast as it should.

“What are you saying?” Neil demands, tense and desperate and so fucking excited he can’t even process it.

“It’s not the right time for me to tell you yet. But I’m sure you are clever enough to figure it out, anyway.”

There’s a pause, in which Neil can hear his own erratic breathing.

“Are you going to take the job, Neil?” the man says, finally.

“But I don’t know anything about it still!” Neil explodes, shaky hand not holding the phone flying to his hair. “You just call me out of nowhere, treating me like shit and still expecting me to follow you blindly like some kind of mad fool, and you haven’t given me _anything_ – not even a scrap of actual information, not even your bloody name! But I’m supposed to just let it slide and get myself involved in whatever shady bollocks you want to drag me into for reasons you obviously aren’t gonna explain to me!”

“That wasn’t a no.” Another pause, in which Neil tries to come up with a witty reply to that, and then: “Excellent! See you on Monday, Neil.”

“Wh—where?” because, really, what’s the point of asking anything else.

“I will send you the address,” the man says so smugly, Neil wants to reach out through the phone and punch him in his condescending face. “And don’t be late this time.”

The next second, the line goes dead. Neil stares at his phone for another minute, before tucking it back into his pocket and resuming his walk back to the flat. He hasn’t even realized he’s stopped dead in the middle of the street.

He gets an automated email with an address – downtown location this time – the same evening. On Monday, he gets up at five in the morning lest he be a minute late away, god forbid, and makes his way to the location written in the message.

Nora doesn’t ask, so he doesn’t tell her.

Neil is only going to check out the actual job, nothing more – it’s not set in stone, anyway. He’ll just check it out and leave, no strings attached, so he could breathe easier. He hasn’t signed any contracts yet, so he’s free to go anytime he wants.

That’s what Neil tells himself on the way to the spot, feeling more alive than he has in so long he can’t even remember.

**Author's Note:**

> the second part should be up soon enough. In the meantime, your comments help get myself together and finish writing it.


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